Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

145 ^1-2 I will praise you, my God and King, and bless your name each day and forever.

³ Great is Jehovah! Greatly praise him! His greatness is beyond discovery! ⁴ Let each generation tell its children what glorious things he does. ⁵ I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles. ⁶ Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. ⁷ Everyone will tell about how good you are and sing about your righteousness.

⁸ Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love.

³ Shields flash red in the sunlight! The attack begins! See their scarlet uniforms! See their glittering chariots moving forward side by side, pulled by prancing steeds! ⁴ Your own chariots race recklessly along the streets and through the squares, darting like lightning, gleaming like torches. ⁵ The king shouts for his officers; they stumble in their haste, rushing to the walls to set up their defenses. ⁶ But too late! The river gates are open! The enemy has entered! The palace is in panic!

⁷ The queen of Nineveh is brought out naked to the streets and led away, a slave, with all her maidens weeping after her; listen to them mourn like doves and beat their breasts! ⁸ Nineveh is like a leaking water tank! Her soldiers slip away, deserting her; she cannot hold them back. “Stop, stop,” she shouts, but they keep on running.

⁹ Loot the silver! Loot the gold! There seems to be no end of treasures. Her vast, uncounted wealth is stripped away. ¹⁰ Soon the city is an empty shambles; hearts melt in horror; knees quake; her people stand aghast, pale-faced and trembling.

¹¹ Where now is that great Nineveh, lion of the nations, full of fight and boldness, where even the old and feeble, as well as the young and tender, lived unafraid?

¹² O Nineveh, once mighty lion! You crushed your enemies to feed your children and your wives, and filled your city and your homes with captured goods and slaves.

¹³ But now the Lord Almighty has turned against you. He destroys your weapons. Your chariots stand there, silent and unused. Your finest youths lie dead. Never again will you bring back slaves from conquered nations; never again will you rule the earth.

⁵ Check up on yourselves. Are you really Christians? Do you pass the test? Do you feel Christ’s presence and power more and more within you? Or are you just pretending to be Christians when actually you aren’t at all? ⁶ I hope you can agree that I have stood that test and truly belong to the Lord.

⁷ I pray that you will live good lives, not because that will be a feather in our caps,^[a] proving that what we teach is right; no, for we want you to do right even if we ourselves are despised. ⁸ Our responsibility is to encourage the right at all times, not to hope for evil.^{[b] 9} We are glad to be weak and despised if you are really strong. Our greatest wish and prayer is that you will become mature Christians.

¹⁰ I am writing this to you now in the hope that I won’t need to scold and punish when I come; for I want to use the Lord’s authority that he has given me, not to punish you but to make you strong.